Journey of a committed paleodemographer

This book is dedicated to Jean-Pierre Bocquet-Appel, anthropologist and biologist, one of the founding fathers of palaeodemography in France, who died in 2018. Known and recognised worldwide, he contributed to the development of new techniques for estimating the age at death of skeletal assemblages and promoted the introduction of estimators in palaeodemography. He also participated in the emergence of spatial demography and multi- agent modelling, particularly of Neolithic farmers. We owe him a considerable advance in the understanding of demographic processes linked to the great transitions that humans have experienced in different parts of the world with the discovery of the signature of the demographic transition implied in the passage of societies from a collection economy to an agricultural economy. This book offers a journey to the heart of his life as a researcher, taking in turn, in a diachronic and multidisciplinary approach, anthropological demography from prehistory to the contemporary period. It also paints a generous portrait of this committed man who has never ceased to work for his discipline, whether through a reflective approach to the history of science and epistemology or the transmission of his knowledge to younger generations. This book invites you to an original and innovative experience on the borders of a rare discipline, paleodemography

Abstract Book: Scales of Social, Environmental & Cultural Change in Past Societies

The interplay of environment, social relations, material culture, population dynamics, and human perception are the key factors of socio-environmental changes. The exploration of processes and parameters of societal change enable further exploration of transformations of human-environmental interactions. These processes and parameters are detectable in the development of, for example, settlement systems, material culture, or ritual sites, which link different socio-environmental components. Humans and environments deeply shaped each other, creating diverse social, environmental, and cultural constellations. On the one hand, examining the roots of social, environmental, and cultural phenomena and processes, which substantially marked past human development, can lead to a deeper understanding of the development of societies. On the other hand, a focus on transformation patterns within momentous developments of past societies opens up the possibility of identifying substantial and enduring re-organisation of socio-environmental interaction patterns

Between Tradition and Transformation: A Feminist Investigation of the Role of Pastoral Women within Tanzania\u27s Integrated Environment and Development Landscape

Pastoral women hold pivotal social and environmental roles within their communities. Equally and actively engaging pastoral women in processes to conserve and sustainably use rangeland resources has therefore become an important focus for integrated environment and development intervention. In northern Tanzania, pastoral women find themselves at the center of gender equality efforts, which attempt to translate gender and environment theory into conservation action that elevates pastoral women’s historically unheard voices. Along the way, particular global narratives have positioned pastoral women alternately as passive beneficiaries or as powerful allies in biodiversity conservation and natural resource management. Although the importance of integrating gender considerations into conservation work is now widely acknowledged, there remains a pressing need to examine how pastoral women are understood and meaningfully engaged in a contemporary environment and development landscape. My research attends to this need by investigating how pastoral women are engaged as actors within the integrated environment and development agenda in Tanzania. The first part of the study uses critical discourse analysis to interrupt dominant global narratives and explore local discourse that tells a multifaceted story about pastoral women and their environment. Placed in the broader context of the politics of integrated environment and development, my analysis indicates that local organizations actively resist specific limiting global discourses to create space for pastoral women to define their own identities and roles in natural resource management. In the second part of the study, I draw upon semi-structured, in-depth interviews with leaders and staff of both local and international organizations operating in northern Tanzania’s rangelands to investigate how the voices and knowledge of women pastoralists are invited to influence their environment and development work. The findings suggest that organizations operating in northern Tanzania have embraced the complexity of the role of pastoral women but have yet to match this truth with strategies to engage women across social categories and robustly measure the impacts of their involvement. Jointly, data from this study demonstrates a consistent push and pull between tradition and transformation, ultimately inviting actors to break away from dichotomous world views to design integrated social-ecological projects that more successfully honor today’s pastoral women. I conclude with recommendations for how ‘new’ conservation interventions could also incorporate new frames of work that are more responsive to local perspectives on pathways toward greater sustainability and equity

Perspectives on Public Policy in Societal-Environmental Crises

This is an open access book. Histories we tell never emerge in a vacuum, and history as an academic discipline that studies the past is highly sensitive to the concerns of the present and the heated debates that can divide entire societies. But does the study of the past also have something to teach us about the future? Can history help us in coping with the planetary crisis we are now facing? By analyzing historical societies as complex adaptive systems, we contribute to contemporary thinking about societal-environmental interactions in policy and planning and consider how environmental and climatic changes, whether sudden high impact events or more subtle gradual changes, impacted human responses in the past. We ask how societal perceptions of such changes affect behavioral patterns and explanatory rationalities in premodernity, and whether a better historical understanding of these relationships can inform our response to contemporary problems of similar nature and magnitude, such as adapting to climate change

Advances in Computational Social Science and Social Simulation

Aquesta conferència és la celebració conjunta de la "10th Artificial Economics Conference AE", la "10th Conference of the European Social Simulation Association ESSA" i la "1st Simulating the Past to Understand Human History SPUHH".Conferència organitzada pel Laboratory for Socio­-Historical Dynamics Simulation (LSDS-­UAB) de la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.Readers will find results of recent research on computational social science and social simulation economics, management, sociology,and history written by leading experts in the field. SOCIAL SIMULATION (former ESSA) conferences constitute annual events which serve as an international platform for the exchange of ideas and discussion of cutting edge research in the field of social simulations, both from the theoretical as well as applied perspective, and the 2014 edition benefits from the cross-fertilization of three different research communities into one single event. The volume consists of 122 articles, corresponding to most of the contributions to the conferences, in three different formats: short abstracts (presentation of work-in-progress research), posters (presentation of models and results), and full papers (presentation of social simulation research including results and discussion). The compilation is completed with indexing lists to help finding articles by title, author and thematic content. We are convinced that this book will serve interested readers as a useful compendium which presents in a nutshell the most recent advances at the frontiers of computational social sciences and social simulation researc

Stakeholder perspectives of the Social Licence to Operate: exploring the governance of shale gas development in England

The aim of this research is to investigate the governance of Shale Gas Development (SDG) in England to determine how stakeholders perceive the regulatory regime, regulators and how they understand the associated risks and benefits. The three key research questions are: How do stakeholders of SDG frame their perceptions of risk; which aspects, if any, are important for stakeholders to issue a SLO to the shale gas industry and; to what extent do stakeholders of SGD perceive the regulatory regime in England to be adequate.Using a case study research design, this research investigates the Social Licence to Operate (SLO) and governance in two key SGD areas of England, Yorkshire and Lancashire. Semi-structured interviews with participants drew on a multitude of factors when forming perceptions of therisks and benefits associated with SGD, pro-SGD participants frame their perceptions based on quantitative risk assessment methodologies, anti-SGD participants use their personal experience of the industry. This research examines which are the important factors regarding the issuance of SLO from a community perspective.This thesis contributes to knowledge in the following ways; by highlighting the importance of understanding stakeholders’ perceptions and framing of risk, by considering how and why communities grant the SLO and to recognise that local communities consider the effectiveness of other aspects of the operation in addition to the activities of the industry. It is therefore helpful to consider the ‘granting of’ the SLO by the community rather than ‘gaining’ a SLO by the industry.Limitations for this research include, despite efforts, no representation from key regulatory agencies such as the HSE and the local authorities in Lancashire or Yorkshire. More demographic data would have been desirable, such as participants employment information and educationalattainment in order to ascertain the connection between knowledge and understanding of the issues discussed